“I Grew Up Thinking”: 30 People Share The Random Things They Thought When They Were Growing Up, And Almost Everyone Finds It Relatable
It's the lens of your past experiences through which you understand the world. But when you're just a kid and haven't been around for long enough, or simply lack guidance from adults, you will formulate your own interpretations of how everything works.
But since they're often based on imagination, it's only a matter of time before reality crushes our naive beliefs. And we at Bored Panda decided it would be fun to check out what misconceptions people had when they were little.
Digging around Twitter, we compiled the funniest "I grew up thinking" statements and put them together into this amusing list. So continue scrolling and enjoy!
This post may include affiliate links.
If you grew up in the 60's & 70's quicksand was a real fear. The number of TV shows & films that made you think it was certain death were a tad too numerous.
I was very disappointed years ago when we had mice...and there was no cute hole with a welcome mat out front.
Sure, we can run from the world, even deny the truths that seem too difficult to accept. But this doesn't get us anywhere. In an earlier Bored Panda interview, social science writer and researcher Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D., MPP, highlighted how human life is uniquely anxious compared to other organisms.
"Just compare the range of worries a human could have compared to any other critter. No contest. To cope, we need denial, escapism, entertainment, but to survive we need all hands on deck in reality too," he explained to us then.
"I'm on a campaign I call 'optimal: see illusion, safe escapism or strategic gullibility', encouraging people to take their denialist flights of fancy but always with a return ticket to reality safe in your heart pocket. It's not how far out you go, but whether you remember to come back. The big difference between a death metal concert and an authoritarian political rally is what happens in the parking lot after. After the metal concert, people return to reality. After the rally, people think they've experienced something more real than reality. That's dangerous."
First time I flew to Bahamas, I was terrified and did not understand why the plane will not make a detour. LOL
One study of 2,000 adults across the United States, which was commissioned by global tour operator G Adventures, suggests that the average American spends 12 hours and 56 minutes escaping their reality each week. (That's roughly four years over a lifetime.)
The most popular forms of disconnecting from work, responsibilities, and everything else that drives them crazy came in the form of reading books (1 hour 34 minutes), watching movies (2 hours 37 minutes), and dreaming of vacations (44 minutes).
Not illegal, but parents banned it “because everyone will see what we’re doing.”
But, again, this can't go on forever. Jeremy Sherman thinks people can make it easier for themselves by focusing on what he calls ironic fallibilism.
"An ironic situation is one where you get the opposite of what you expected: you do the right thing and it comes out wrong or vice versa. An ironic attitude is recognition that despite your best effort, ironic situations are not entirely escapable. There is no sure-fire formula for living. Just when you discover the meaning of life, it changes."
"Ironism is not cynicism. It's the recognition that life is deeply tragic and deeply slapstick. Life is tragicomic," he explained.
Marcin Woizciwizynksy asks if it's ok to go home now. He's tired of being the South Pole. You could say he doesn't like his Pole position.
100 dollars is a lot if you have no bills to pay. That's like, 172 pounds of bananas.
"Fallibilism is a concept in philosophy and more than any other notion, fallibilism has given me peace of mind about dealing with reality," Sherman continued.
"I think of the fallibilist mantra as 'no matter how confident I am in a bet, I remain still more confident that it is a bet. Life is iffy guesswork. Yoda is wrong. There's only try. One can make better bets. One can bet with high confidence. One can't escape betting."
TBH, fight against Acid Rain was one of the few successful environmental action taken in modern times. Since the 1970s, new regulations passed worldwide pushed for the widespread introduction of de-sulfurization processes for fuels (especially crude and coal) and technological innovation let to cleaner high-temperature combustion processes. This efforts more than halved the emissions of acidifier agents in the atmosphere. Acid rain impact has been successfully mitigated in America and EU, it is still a problem in mainland China, especially in the east, due to general lack of environmental responsibility, use of cheap dirty fuels and high concentration of industries with old machinery.
Sherman sees ironic fallibilism as the antidote to two unworkable approaches that are often combined:
The first one is fundamentalist hypocrisy, or pretending you have the formula for living though you don't, can't, and shouldn't live by it. And the second one is cynical hypocrisy, or pretending there's no formula so you can do whatever you want.
"[Jerks] (I'm a psychoproctologist) employ both. Everyone should live by their supposed fundamentalist formula that they cynically don't think they have to live by. No deed is too dirty for saints like them."
It's more of an issue when you have your own apple tree. The worms are very real.
I mean seriously, let’s replace “rock paper scissors” and flipping a coin with this!
We must constantly work on educating ourselves and seeking knowledge that can provide answers to questions we sometimes can't even articulate. It's one thing to grow up thinking it's illegal to rip off your mattress tag. But it's another to take this notion into adulthood and beyond.
History can be a nice subject to start with, as it shows what happens to those who deny the facts, reminding us about the scientific method and that following the evidence we gather is our best bet to navigate the world.
I did not. Because I once heard a comic say Evian spelled backward is Naive.
This reminds me of a story that my dad likes to tell. When he was in college, he couldn't decide between majoring in geology or marine biology. He asked his advisor for some input and his advisor told him that he should go for the marine biology degree because if times got tough, he could always eat his experiments. My dad became a geologist! 😂
I always hoped I'd get to go through a tunnel of love and be kissed inside. Never happened.
As a person who passes a family of skunks every day on my way to work, I still think this.
That is actually the test now here in central Florida. I think it’s ridiculous and in no way prepares kids to deal with the roads around here
In my country (belgium) it is in fact illegal to drive without shoes because of safety
Yes! And Boyz 2 Men.... When it says "stop pointing fingers, the blame is on me" I thought it said, stomp on fingers! 😆😆😆😆 Good times LOL
Lol it's really true. I always saved it for last. By the time I was an adult I actually hated them and preferred real cherries. I used to get something called a Shirley Temple, and it's basically just a drink made of red grenadine and sprite with a maraschino cherry and kids get it because it looks like an alcoholic drink and makes you feel grown up (I usually get one on my birthday every year, lol). The cherry is really the fancy part.
i still feel guilty of this when i walk my dog and they have a nice lawn 😅😄
I wish the playgrounds around me looked this good. The ones I grew up with were trash.
If my friends lived in a house (not a flat in a condo) they were like millionaires for me.
My younger sister once showed me a picture she found of me sitting in college hallway. I told her, "Weird. I don't remember that place. Where was this?" She replied, "That's because it's not you! I saw this girl in a hallway at my school!" 😱 Even I thought the damn girl was me. Seriously creepy! Never thought that could happen until then.
Nope ! I just learned real quick We never had more than a little in “savings “
You should use the cold so you aren't ingesting c**p from the buildup in the water heater
It is not true. The floor is the (electrical) ground, or negative pole, of the circuit, with the metal mesh at the top being energized at 40-60V DC (usually they are run at 48 volts). The pole picks up the current from the top and releases it to the ground through a 0,5 HP electric motor. You won't be electrocuted since the tension is low, and the most direct path to the negative pole of the generator is through the metal and the wires. Touching the floor of a bumper car ride is perfectly safe, save for the risk of being hit by the cars.
I grew up terrified of lions because I read they don’t care if their prey is dead before they started eating it so I thought I’d be devoured by a group of lions from the feet up.
No ! Never ! I can’t remember anything except song lyrics and I can remember song lyrics like it’s my job😂
Well there is another sister, Elizabeth. And she does look a lot like Mary Kate and Ashley.
My mom used to babysit and I was terribly jealous of the attention my mom gave to the other kids sometimes. But she started weighing me and another girl as a competition and I was, like, 72lbs and the other girl was 70 and that literally began my issues with my weight that carried through my whole life. She weighed us together once a week. And because I had this jealousy already I started feeling like I wanted to be better and 'beat' her. I was only like 10 years old but it created this competition between us that caused a little bit of a domino effect in my brain about weight and self-worth.
Am I the only one who thought I was actually a real life Muppet monster and I was going to wake up from this dream of being a human?
We had blue bowls when I was a kid, always would b***h if I didn't get one of the two we had on mac night lol
Looking at him now, all I can see is that his collar looks like he has a severely jutted out lower lip that flaps like a muppet.
Hehe I actually tried as a child to keep one outfit on forever. My parents weren't that happy lol.
There was a story of kidnapped baby girls to be sacrificed, so they said a pierced baby are malformed and that the gods/Satan (whoever have to be given a sacrifice) doesn't accept malformed babies, this story make people pierce the new borns so to protect them.
This is kind of true in that you can't have a recording contract to enter as it's for 'amateurs', however some famous acts have been on there after leaving contracts or losing them.
I am old enough to remember when it was thought big dinosaurs like the Diplodocus had a "second brain" in their hindquarters. It was even in a short documentary they showed at the local science museum! Of course, it's long since been debunked. As an adult I went to a special t-rex exhibition at the museum in Sydney and was amazed by how much we've learned since I was a kid!
I remember growing up as a kid thinking how long it would be before the year 2000 and that I would be 'old'. And to be 40? I couldn't envisage it as it seemed so far away! I turn 50 next year...
She was my favorite, I always hoped Kevin got to meet her again someday
Sorry, no. My aunt's high school track and field team sold bagels to raise money. Never understood what the money was for.
As a banker this can be a serious annoyance. We have to validate customer's with MMN and some cultures don't really understand what that even means. They think you're saying 'middle'. It's such a outdated thing because a lot of women don't get married so asking someone their MMN is just going to be the same last name as them so it feels like it's not a very secure validation question anymore.
"I don't believe that you're being truthful" " You callin' me a liar then"
I thought I’d get sucked down into the escalator if I didn’t step off it in time…
Anyone growing up think that umbrellas would really help you if you jumped from a wall or a tree?
When I was very young, I thought I figured out Santa's secret...He was old Jesus.
On a similar note I thought Tom Petty's "Running Down a Dream" was "Running Down the Drain" and for years pictured a tiny man frantically trying not to be washed down the drain of a kitchen sink!🤣
Load More Replies... Aliens didn’t make the list! Growing up in the 80’s I really thought aliens were going to be a bigger problem !
I once saw a movie where a lady was telling her parents she was pregnant or wanted a baby or something, I don't know, and the montage showed her eating ice cream out of the carton with a baby bump. I thought women just ate a lot if they wanted to grow a baby.
Reading this post, today i learned that my face is not ‘going to stick like that’
Also the 1st time I was told “ put some elbow grease on it”, I tried to squeeze my elbow for the grease to come out ! I was maybe 6
This is a unique thing of my own but when I was a munchkin I was CONVINCED my grandpa was actually Bill Clinton. They gave him a fake family to protect us. And that was why he traveled so much, especially to DC. I mean I thought I had figured out some major secret. I believed this for his entire first term as President. I eventually came to the disappointing realization that he was who he said he was. I love him all the same :-)
Anyone else grow up thinking that Disney movies and other movies portrayed what love is/how it works? It just made me delusional..
I thought I’d get sucked down into the escalator if I didn’t step off it in time…
Anyone growing up think that umbrellas would really help you if you jumped from a wall or a tree?
When I was very young, I thought I figured out Santa's secret...He was old Jesus.
On a similar note I thought Tom Petty's "Running Down a Dream" was "Running Down the Drain" and for years pictured a tiny man frantically trying not to be washed down the drain of a kitchen sink!🤣
Load More Replies... Aliens didn’t make the list! Growing up in the 80’s I really thought aliens were going to be a bigger problem !
I once saw a movie where a lady was telling her parents she was pregnant or wanted a baby or something, I don't know, and the montage showed her eating ice cream out of the carton with a baby bump. I thought women just ate a lot if they wanted to grow a baby.
Reading this post, today i learned that my face is not ‘going to stick like that’
Also the 1st time I was told “ put some elbow grease on it”, I tried to squeeze my elbow for the grease to come out ! I was maybe 6
This is a unique thing of my own but when I was a munchkin I was CONVINCED my grandpa was actually Bill Clinton. They gave him a fake family to protect us. And that was why he traveled so much, especially to DC. I mean I thought I had figured out some major secret. I believed this for his entire first term as President. I eventually came to the disappointing realization that he was who he said he was. I love him all the same :-)
Anyone else grow up thinking that Disney movies and other movies portrayed what love is/how it works? It just made me delusional..
